Life is fragile. Don’t feed the birds while the cat is around.

I learned this life lesson recently and immediately had to sit down and write my confession — I was an accessory to murder. I baited the trap for the cat to kill the bird. Literally.

This shocking truth was shouted to the neighborhood by the Bluejay family shortly after the incident occurred. My guilt was overwhelming. It required quick confession and repentance. I should have known. The flighty creatures had stopped coming by my door, about the same time the cat wandered in with her furry-ball-kittens carelessly deposited in the arbor vine above my patio. It wasn’t safe there so they didn’t stay long. Little did I know what the future would bring in a few short weeks.

That’s how my week began. I’ve been contemplating the lesson to be learned and frankly determined when Momma-cat carried off the bird, I would never feed her again. But the four nearly identical kittens, dark with white throats and mittens, just couldn’t be ignored. I’m hoping one will decide I’m not the mean giant and will stay around longer than the food lasts — and let me tame it with pets and purring.

Last night I didn’t know what I would write for the column due this morning. Then I had a dream. I don’t always dream and when I do remember them in the morning, I often write them down to reference later because Holy Spirit may be telling me something important.

That happened a few weeks ago with Mudslide. In short it was the escape from dark brown mud slowly oozing into the crevices of an iron gated city, like New Orleans, with locks and rooms cordoned off by solid sealing metal. The mud continued to make its way around the doors so the people in my dream kept moving to higher ground.

Last night I had a similar dream but this time it was lava. The people in Lavaland were being overtaken by hot molten lava that overran rooftops and houses, trees, buildings of all kinds. Just when we thought safety was at hand, the warning signs — just like in a disaster movie —thrust us out of comfort and back on the run for our lives.

Before awakening, the only survivors in the dream were a young boy and myself, alone on a rooftop or balcony. The lava below on one side was cooling and the boy jumped down only to have the rubber of his tennis shoes start to smoke. He got to safety, but barely. I think we heard a helicopter overhead. I like to think that was the case as I pondered what the dream meant, so similar to the other one only weeks ago.

What came to mind was the solution to both natural disasters — to gain higher ground. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the metaphor of “higher ground” to be the call from God to take the high road, the one less traveled. Once believers start walking a path of righteousness, and the thing that has motivated many non-Christians who practice various other forms of spiritual awareness, is the idea of taking a higher plain of conscientiousness.

For the true believer in Jesus Christ as Lord, Redeemer and Savior that requires deeper understanding of what that commitment means. As one young man, an atheist being wooed by Holy Spirit, said he heard, “Read God’s Word.”

Isaiah 55 tells us, “’For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

In light of my dreams, that is something to think about. Selah.